2023 rallying thread (WRC, ERC, national and historics)
Discussion
Rally Chile on ATM!
First WRC round I've been able to watch for awhile, plus had the will to watch it post Breen.
Carnage today with punctures whatevers been going on! The stages have been long, all 20k+ but the gavel looked fairly fine, only big rocks off the line.
Grégoire Munster and local Alberto Heller had drives with the usual Tanak and Loubet. They had been going half decently for a debut rally in wRC1 cars but now have suffered badly with punctures and delamations. Loubet f
ked the car into the scenery for the craic on day 1.
Tanak for once has been lucky, everyone else has had punctures and on these long stages have lost loads of time. Tanak leads by a minute from Suinnen, Neuville 14 back, Evans 10 back and then Rovanpera. Evans had been second but got fked with punctures which put him back to 4
4 stages tomorrow about 52 km's left!
I've enjoyed it, using the rally TV for the first time, I think the UI is a bit alll over the place
First WRC round I've been able to watch for awhile, plus had the will to watch it post Breen.
Carnage today with punctures whatevers been going on! The stages have been long, all 20k+ but the gavel looked fairly fine, only big rocks off the line.
Grégoire Munster and local Alberto Heller had drives with the usual Tanak and Loubet. They had been going half decently for a debut rally in wRC1 cars but now have suffered badly with punctures and delamations. Loubet f
ked the car into the scenery for the craic on day 1.Tanak for once has been lucky, everyone else has had punctures and on these long stages have lost loads of time. Tanak leads by a minute from Suinnen, Neuville 14 back, Evans 10 back and then Rovanpera. Evans had been second but got f
ked with punctures which put him back to 44 stages tomorrow about 52 km's left!
I've enjoyed it, using the rally TV for the first time, I think the UI is a bit alll over the place
confucuis said:
...using the rally TV for the first time, I think the UI is a bit alll over the place
Yes, its like they heard people complaining about the WRC+ website so they decided to make it worse!I miss the schedule bar across the bottom on WRC+ where you could check the time of upcoming stages or pop back and watch a different stage, now you have to go right back out to the schedule page and scroll down for a few minutes to find things.
GravelBen said:
confucuis said:
...using the rally TV for the first time, I think the UI is a bit alll over the place
Yes, its like they heard people complaining about the WRC+ website so they decided to make it worse!I miss the schedule bar across the bottom on WRC+ where you could check the time of upcoming stages or pop back and watch a different stage, now you have to go right back out to the schedule page and scroll down for a few minutes to find things.
I'm not sure of the point of the "live TV" channel is either. In a world where everything is going on demand why introduce a 24/7 feed?
Well Tanak did it, finally a bit of luck his way. I thought it could go wrong given Hella and Munster both had issues on the last few stages!
Drama at the end with Suninen crashing out from second trying to keep his team Neuville behind him and handing the Manufacturers championship to Toyota here. Hyundai had been on course to keep the fight alive till he crashed, which meant that suddenly Toyota now outscored Hyundai by around 15 points.
I thought it was a very had mistake to make, he just hit a tree stump on the outside the road, what was he doing out there? Also, while we all love a good fight, crashing out on the second last stage is a bit much!
Drama at the end with Suninen crashing out from second trying to keep his team Neuville behind him and handing the Manufacturers championship to Toyota here. Hyundai had been on course to keep the fight alive till he crashed, which meant that suddenly Toyota now outscored Hyundai by around 15 points.
I thought it was a very had mistake to make, he just hit a tree stump on the outside the road, what was he doing out there? Also, while we all love a good fight, crashing out on the second last stage is a bit much!
WRC is a mess at the moment and as a fan it really hurts seeing the complete farse it has become.
Rally TV is so bad, the user interface is neigh on impossible to use, this weekend stages 4,5,6 werent available, lots of people being asked to subscribe again, it buffers like hell when on the phone or tablet BUT when you cast to your TV it streams at full HD with no buffering, but the app isn't compatible with smart TV's and won't be until next year. The only improvement they've made is by removing spoilers from the landing page when you open it.
The series itself is a mess with there being barely enough cars finishing to fill a podium, listening to the Dirtfish podcast the switch to Hybrid has literally brought M-Sport to brink of collapse after being assured they could sell 10 seats a year as privateers only for the privateers to be unable to deal with the cost of upto 400k GBP a round due in no small part because of the management the hybrid system needs. It also makes it impossible for privateers to use the cars in other non WRC rounds because of this and the fact that the other championships don't have the means to safely host hybrid cars which require their own special safety standards.
I love the Rally1 concept, but for the survival of the championship they need to admit they messed up, scrap it and put Rally2 as the new top echelon. That would allow Subaru and Skoda to seamlessly enter the championship and it would open up the door for loads of privateers. The answer is right there.
Sadly knowing how badly managed the championship is, there's little doubt they'll make such a sensible decision.
Rally TV is so bad, the user interface is neigh on impossible to use, this weekend stages 4,5,6 werent available, lots of people being asked to subscribe again, it buffers like hell when on the phone or tablet BUT when you cast to your TV it streams at full HD with no buffering, but the app isn't compatible with smart TV's and won't be until next year. The only improvement they've made is by removing spoilers from the landing page when you open it.
The series itself is a mess with there being barely enough cars finishing to fill a podium, listening to the Dirtfish podcast the switch to Hybrid has literally brought M-Sport to brink of collapse after being assured they could sell 10 seats a year as privateers only for the privateers to be unable to deal with the cost of upto 400k GBP a round due in no small part because of the management the hybrid system needs. It also makes it impossible for privateers to use the cars in other non WRC rounds because of this and the fact that the other championships don't have the means to safely host hybrid cars which require their own special safety standards.
I love the Rally1 concept, but for the survival of the championship they need to admit they messed up, scrap it and put Rally2 as the new top echelon. That would allow Subaru and Skoda to seamlessly enter the championship and it would open up the door for loads of privateers. The answer is right there.
Sadly knowing how badly managed the championship is, there's little doubt they'll make such a sensible decision.
Edited by Captain Obvious on Monday 2nd October 02:27
it is a shame and yes if they lose MSport I think the series is done, you cannot really sustain a series like this with only two factory teams, yes it happened with Ford and Citroen years ago but they had a few privateers in there too.
Sadly most top level series think the only way to succeed is to allow themselves to be run and dominated by manufacturers, this is nearly always a mistake. The same [people basically ruined rallycross in under 10 years.
I have been an advocate for some time of a post R5 class or whatever it is called now, you could possibly hybridize any of the cars, all the manufactureres are there now that Toyota have built their R5 Yaris, it is just the most obvious solution.
Sadly most top level series think the only way to succeed is to allow themselves to be run and dominated by manufacturers, this is nearly always a mistake. The same [people basically ruined rallycross in under 10 years.
I have been an advocate for some time of a post R5 class or whatever it is called now, you could possibly hybridize any of the cars, all the manufactureres are there now that Toyota have built their R5 Yaris, it is just the most obvious solution.
confucuis said:
...I thought it was a very had mistake to make, he just hit a tree stump on the outside the road, what was he doing out there? Also, while we all love a good fight, crashing out on the second last stage is a bit much!
I haven't watched much of this weekends but heard it was a suspension failure that threw him off?GravelBen said:
confucuis said:
...I thought it was a very had mistake to make, he just hit a tree stump on the outside the road, what was he doing out there? Also, while we all love a good fight, crashing out on the second last stage is a bit much!
I haven't watched much of this weekends but heard it was a suspension failure that threw him off?
the rally TV app is rubbish, but suspect it's being built using the agile methodology beloved of IT people. Minimum viable product then add to it. Which is fine if you are not spending resource fixing bugs, but making improvements. I guess it will improve in time.
Someone mentioned about 'live' stages v on demand. And they are right, it was considered in the DR ownership times, that if a sport wasn't live it wasn't important. So they are now wedded to this. But on demand would be better, especially if they can clean up the broadcast gremlins.
Someone mentioned about 'live' stages v on demand. And they are right, it was considered in the DR ownership times, that if a sport wasn't live it wasn't important. So they are now wedded to this. But on demand would be better, especially if they can clean up the broadcast gremlins.
Dynion Araf Uchaf said:
the rally TV app is rubbish, but suspect it's being built using the agile methodology beloved of IT people. Minimum viable product then add to it. Which is fine if you are not spending resource fixing bugs, but making improvements. I guess it will improve in time.
Someone mentioned about 'live' stages v on demand. And they are right, it was considered in the DR ownership times, that if a sport wasn't live it wasn't important. So they are now wedded to this. But on demand would be better, especially if they can clean up the broadcast gremlins.
That might have been my comment earlier. I'm happy enough with the live element - in some ways its nice to just have it run on in the background while I'm doing something else, but I don't know why it needs turning into a 24/7 channel. It's confusing as hell when you have live coverage on and then you glance back and its showing Sardinia 2015 or an ERC round from May.Someone mentioned about 'live' stages v on demand. And they are right, it was considered in the DR ownership times, that if a sport wasn't live it wasn't important. So they are now wedded to this. But on demand would be better, especially if they can clean up the broadcast gremlins.
Dynion Araf Uchaf said:
Someone mentioned about 'live' stages v on demand. And they are right, it was considered in the DR ownership times, that if a sport wasn't live it wasn't important. So they are now wedded to this. But on demand would be better, especially if they can clean up the broadcast gremlins.
Yeah, that's an interview DR did about 20 years ago (and possibly more). He was adamant that any sport had to be live; the old BBC/ Ch4 highlights weren't sufficient in the current era. At the moment it's quantity over quality with them covering every stage, and Rally2 class getting a raw deal. I'd prefer them covering less stages live, but giving Rally2 more coverage......
In all honesty, the WRC isn't a great 'product' at the moment, and they seem unable to decide what the future direction should be.
ArnageWRC said:
Yeah, that's an interview DR did about 20 years ago (and possibly more). He was adamant that any sport had to be live; the old BBC/ Ch4 highlights weren't sufficient in the current era.
At the moment it's quantity over quality with them covering every stage, and Rally2 class getting a raw deal. I'd prefer them covering less stages live, but giving Rally2 more coverage......
In all honesty, the WRC isn't a great 'product' at the moment, and they seem unable to decide what the future direction should be.
I think its hard not to offer a live product in the internet era where you can find results instantly. I struggle to watch any sport on catch up if I know the result already.At the moment it's quantity over quality with them covering every stage, and Rally2 class getting a raw deal. I'd prefer them covering less stages live, but giving Rally2 more coverage......
In all honesty, the WRC isn't a great 'product' at the moment, and they seem unable to decide what the future direction should be.
You make an interesting point about the rally2. It would be great to see more of this as its highly competitive with a good mix of drivers challenging over the course of the season, and wildcard entrants who can be up there too. However, if we also look in the context of rally1... what would happen if another manufacturer came in or the existing ones were fielding one or two more cars for themselves or customers? With the compressed event structure for TV we might be in a scenario where you'd struggle to even cover those let alone a rally2 car.
It's a tricky balance. It would be great if they could figure out a way to provide a bit more depth to the coverage but I'm not sure how. Extended and/or separate stream for rally2? You'd need more on the ground reporters & logistical support which would be hard to justify for the lower level competition.
I find there is definitely more excitement when watching live, seeing things unfold as they happen.
But timing is often inconvenient with time zones etc (Chile stages live were from around midnight - 8am for me) so its good to be able to go back and watch afterwards especially if I know a certain stage has had a lot of action.
But timing is often inconvenient with time zones etc (Chile stages live were from around midnight - 8am for me) so its good to be able to go back and watch afterwards especially if I know a certain stage has had a lot of action.
Dynion Araf Uchaf said:
egomeister said:
He clipped a stump which broke the steering
that's likely to lead to suspension failure isn't it? 
That makes sense, reports I'd seen earlier were a bit ambiguous but implied suspension failure caused the impact rather than the other way around.Wouldn't be the first time a crash is reported as a mechanical! Seen it often enough at national and club level too... funny when you've towed someone out of a ditch after a stage and then see their retirement listed as 'radiator' in the official results.
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